SAN FRANCISCO — Patricia Dunn, the former chairwoman of Hewlett- Packard, and four other people were to be named Wednesday in indictments being filed by California's attorney general in the spying case at the company, according to lawyers involved in the case.

In addition to Dunn, the Attorney General Bill Lockyer intended to indict Kevin Hunsaker, a former senior lawyer at Hewlett-Packard; Ronald DeLia, a Boston-area private detective; Joseph DePante, owner of Action Research Group, an information broker in Florida; and Bryan Wagner, a Littleton, Colorado, man who is said to have obtained private phone records while working for DePante.

All of those named face four charges: using of false or fraudulent pretenses to obtain confidential information from a public utility, unauthorized access to computer data, identity theft, and conspiracy to commit each of those crimes. All of the charges are felonies.

The charges stem from an internal Hewlett-Packard investigation into leaks from its boardroom. The company hired DeLia, the owner of Security Outsourcing Solutions, who in turn hired DePante's firm to gather information. The state will contend that they used pretexting - pretending to be someone else - to obtain information from telephone company employees.

Dunn initiated the investigation in 2005 by contacting DeLia and received frequent reports on its progress, according to the company. Hunsaker, a senior counsel and director of ethics, supervised the investigation in 2006. Dunn resigned from the board last month. Hunsaker was fired after he refused to resign, his attorney has said.

The United States attorney's office for Northern California is also conducting its own investigation, but the state authorities entered the case first.

Representatives of Dunn said Tuesday that she would begin six months of chemotherapy on Friday for recurrent advanced ovarian cancer.

The revelations at Hewlett-Packard have provided a rare glimpse of boardroom turmoil. They have also cast a harsh light on the questionable and possibly illegal techniques used in the episode that will lead to criminal charges.

Dunn, the former head of Barclays Global Investors, joined the board of Hewlett-Packard in 1998 and took over as chairwoman after the ouster of Carly Fiorina as chairwoman and chief executive in February 2005. Fiorina's removal, after a contentious proxy fight over HP's merger with Compaq Computer, supposedly marked the end of a fitful period for the board.

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But while the business rebounded, boardroom tensions persisted, fueled by news leaks from within. The company ultimately hired private investigators to identify directors disclosing information to the media, and those investigators posed as board members to gain access to personal phone records.

The hunt for a boardroom leaker began as early as January 2005, with a focus on disclosures immediately preceding the removal of Fiorina as chairwoman and chief executive, and a second phase began a year later.

Hewlett-Packard has said that as a public company it had a responsibility to stop unauthorized disclosures. But an internal review revealed that the investigation by its detectives was notable for its lack of close supervision by company officials.

On Sept. 28, in a U.S. House of Representatives panel hearing on the case, 10 witnesses all declined to answer the committee's questions, invoking their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. They included Ann Baskins, Hewlett Packard's chief in- house lawyer, whose attorneys said that she had resigned from the company while insisting in a letter to the committee that she had been repeatedly assured by subordinates that the operation was legal.

As Hewlett-Packard's chief in-house lawyer, Baskins was one of the main executives supervising the company's spying operation on its own directors, journalists and others, meant to identify the source of leaks of confidential information to the news media.

Hunsaker, who reported directly to Baskins, as well as DeLia and DePante were among those who declined to testify.

Under questioning from committee members, Dunn repeated assertions that she had believed that telephone records were obtained legally. She said she had not been aware of the use of subterfuge to obtain phone records, like posing as the customer - a practice known as pretexting.

Dunn also said she had never received a "formal legal opinion about the investigation" and said that in the draft and final reports prepared by Hunsaker in 2006, he made it clear that all methods employed were legal and proper.